PHOTOSHOP CLONE PAINTING
This is the original image I captured during the holidays along the San Antonio Riverwalk from one of the small stone bridges that cross over the river. The capture was at night on tripod.
The painting technique used is "CLONE PAINTING" and this is hand painted entirely in Photoshop. The style was learned from an artist named Jack Davis and he has a training class on Creative Live where you can also learn this technique with a couple other Photoshop painting techniques. This process involves using a little known "special layer" in Photoshop that combines a copy of your photo at 1% opacity with a blank layer at 100% opacity and then these two layers are merged together. This "special layer" can then be painted on with the Photoshop mixer brush WITHOUT having to sample all layers. You can make several copies of this created special layer and make one your underpaint, one your intermediate paint and one your detailed paint. You build up the details of the painting on layers, revealing more detail by using different types of brushes, each with different bristles and smaller tighter strokes. It allows you to paint just like you would if you were painting with real paint. This first layer is my underpaint
This second layer, I changed brushes to a smaller, dryer brush and painted in more details. I switched to the second blank "special layer" that I created at the beginning of the project.
This intermediate layer together with the underpainting looks like this:
This is the third detail mixer brush layer, it only had the finest highlights and details added to bring out some of the sharpness in some of the branches and details in the store fronts and along the riverwalk. Below are the detailed strokes and then the combined underpaint, intermediate and this detail layer together
On this image I also added a special layer using the "fined edge filter" in Photoshop. After creating the find edges, I de-saturated any color from the layer, removed any of the lines from the water because I did not want to add any texture on the water, and then reduced the opacity of the layer to only 10% and put it in the overlay blend mode. It provided just a slight bit of contract and character to the leaves and added some details back into the painted areas.
After all three layers are painted, I add adjustment layers to put a canvas overlay on the image. On this image I also added a transparent texture of gesso media like you would see on a real oil painting. It gives the impression of a raised surface because the texture allows you to define a light direction for how light will interact with the edges of the gesso media.
Photoshop, clone painting, mixer brush, painting on photos, photography painting,